Tag: Education

Is Globalisation Really Fuelling Populism?

One world / courtesy of Kai Schreiber/flickr

This article was originally published by the the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) on 11 May 2016.

On both sides of the Atlantic, populism on the left and the right is on the rise. Its most visible standard-bearer in the United States is Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee. In Europe, there are many strands – from Spain’s leftist Podemos party to France’s right-wing National Front – but all share the same opposition to centrist parties and to the establishment in general. What accounts for voters’ growing revolt against the status quo?

The prevailing explanation is that rising populism amounts to a rebellion by ‘globalisation’s losers’. By pursuing successive rounds of trade liberalisation, the logic goes, leaders in the US and Europe ‘hollowed out’ the domestic manufacturing base, reducing the availability of high-paying jobs for low-skilled workers, who now have to choose between protracted unemployment and menial service-sector jobs. Fed up, those workers are now supposedly rejecting establishment parties for having spearheaded this ‘elite project’.

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Wargaming in the Classroom: An Odyssey

Courtesy of Giacomo Salizzoni/flickr

This article was originally published by War On The Rocks on 19 April 2016.

Several years ago, as a new professor at the Marine Corps War College, I spent a huge amount of time putting together the best presentation on Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War ever presented at any war college at any time. After accounting for the 125-page a night reading limit, I had selected the perfect set of readings. These were reinforced by an unbelievably entrancing and informative lecture, and a slideshow employing stunning period visuals. My plan even set aside copious amounts of time for critical thinking, and what I knew would be an intense Socratic dialogue. Finally, in preparation for the expected bombardment of thoughtful student questions, I prepared myself by re-reading Thucydides’ master work, as well as over a dozen other historical works on the period.

Then, the big day arrived … and I failed miserably.

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Gulf States Under Pressure

Protests in Bahrain in 2011
Protests in Bahrain in 2011. Photo: Al Jazeera English/Flickr.

Since independence, relations between citizens and their states in the Gulf have been shaped in part by the oil and gas wealth that these countries enjoy. Control over oil and gas revenues allows the governments to offer extensive benefits to citizens, while hardly needing to extract any taxes. This system, often described as a rentier state, means that while the state is absolved from the usual need to obtain income from its citizens, they in turn have less of a stake in demanding transparency, accountability and so on, or so the argument goes. Meanwhile, others in the Gulf see their state benefits as evidence of the magnanimity of paternalistic rulers.

The arguments between those who see dissidents as mere ingrates, and those who see conservatives as regime stooges, have been growing more polarized. The resulting political tensions are visible above all in Bahrain, where renewed protests are being met with an intensive crackdown today; and in the UAE, over the recent sentencing of opposition activists, and to some extent also in Kuwait. But either way, the fact remains that this economic model is not sustainable in the long term.

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Categories
Global Voices

Out of the Classroom and Onto the Web

Image by trucolorsfly/Flickr.
Image by trucolorsfly/Flickr.

The Internet and Web 2.0 have enabled students to gain greater and quicker access to ‘International Relations’ (IR) education. Books, courses and information on universities and scholarships are easily available online.

Professor Sanjoy Banerjee, who holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University and is currently Chair of International Relations at the San Francisco State University, said this when contacted over email:

“The main benefit of technological advances (in ICT), particularly the Internet, is that it makes research much quicker. With search engines like Google Scholar, one can find articles and books on topics far quicker and more efficiently than before. Of course, reading and understanding have not become any easier. Still, my students read much more widely, across more disciplines, than I did as a student.”

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Categories
CSS News

Security, Climate and Money

The MAS ETH SPCM is offered in cooperation with leading academic partner institutions (Photo: ETH Zurich)

 

Week 2 of the Center for Security Studies’ Master of Advanced Studies in Security Policy and Crisis Management (MAS SPCM) lecture series moved from its focus on terrorism  to consider money laundering, climate change and their impact upon the changing security landscape.

Money laundering and terrorism

The CSS’s Michel Hess begins by explaining links between money laundering and the financing of terrorist activities:

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